Interview with Archbishop Peter Akinola
Christianity Today, 2006
What is the greatest challenge for the church in Nigeria?
PJA: How are we going to convince our Muslim neighbors and our governments that Nigerian Christians have no other place to call their country but this country? Since 1988, people have been maimed and brutally murdered, their hard-earned money and property destroyed by hooligans, by murderers, all on account of religion. And no one has been brought to justice that we know of. Usually arrests are made, but before you know what is happening they are released, so it’s like they’re doing this with impunity. So our challenge, therefore, is how we’re going to get everybody in this country to know that Nigeria belongs to all of us.
I have been in touch with my Muslim counterpart this whole time, and we are hoping that we can meet soon, so we can work together and see how we can get our followers to understand.
What do you hope to hear from your Muslim counterpart?
Muslims cannot claim that Nigeria is theirs. Now Christians are doing the same. All of us agree that we have to learn to live together. From my point of view, the unity of this country is a done deal. They can’t begin to talk of dividing along religious lines. They can’t do that, because everywhere you go there are Muslims; everywhere you go there are Christians. But in some parts there are more Christians, in other parts there are more Muslims. But you cannot say “southern Christian” or “northern Muslim.” In the north there are seven or eight states where Christians are the majority. So you can’t say a northern region is a Muslim area.
There must be integration of the two. That is what we have to work at. And I’m sure the sultan of Sokoto, who is the head of the Muslims in Nigeria, is also very anxious that we can work along those lines. I’m very hopeful.
In February some Muslims rioted in the north about the Danish cartoons of Muhammad and killed some Christians. You responded that Christian efforts to peacefully coexist have been misunderstood by the Muslims as weakness.
That’s right. I said that because if they knew that we are willing to retaliate or to fight, if we had been doing things their way, Nigeria would have ceased to exist. If, for instance, the Christians are mobilized to destroy Muslims who live among them, we are a majority. What would happen to Nigeria? It would not exist anymore. That’s why I said they have misunderstood our peace approach as our weakness. If they knew that we are stronger in number than they are, would they do this to us? They wouldn’t do it. But I believe that, God helping us, the message will get across after our meeting with their leaders in the next couple of weeks.
You also said that Muslims “do not have a monopoly on violence in this nation” and that CAN “may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue.” The day after you released those statements, some Christians retaliated.
No. You are getting it wrong. You are not within our context. The entire Western press tried to demonize me on this matter. And you are wrong. But I only ask God to forgive the Western press for the way they tried to handle this matter. You do not understand what we are going through here. [The CAN] youth have never been satisfied with us, the elders. They say we are compromising with the government. They want to retaliate. And we have always been telling them, “You can’t do that. You are Christians, you must not do things the way others do things.” And so far we’ve been successful. But the question now is for how long will this be? These boys are becoming more and more restive and beginning to doubt our integrity.
So, I have to remind the nation, not Muslims, that no one has a monopoly on violence. But thank God, so far, we have been able to control our youths.
Now, the attacks were not a result of what I said. What happened was that the corpses of those [Christians] killed in [the northern city of] Maiduguri were brought down to [the southern city of] Onitsha in trucks. As they were unloading them, the youth saw what was happening. They were simply mad. It wasn’t what I said at all. I’ve said this many, many times in the past. But I usually do that to put the Muslims in check—to put the murderous ones among them in check. That is the purpose of that statement.
It’s tough for us in the West to really understand all the dimensions of your local context.
It’s not just you. It’s the entire Western press. I’ve been getting phone calls, but I said no, I’m not going to talk. If they want to know what’s happening, come to our country. Since 1988, where there’s suffering, this comes from our Muslim neighbors. We have never on our own initiated any attack on anybody. Never. And that’s because our youth were willing to take our advice. But now they’re accusing us and calling us names—what do we do?
We could say, “Okay, go ahead.” But we would never do that. Our religion, our Christian faith, our love of God, our love of fatherland, would never allow us to do that.
During a recent CAN meeting, I threatened to resign, because the youth were saying they were going to go to fight and cause more trouble. If they cause more trouble, I will resign. Everybody sat down, kept quiet. We can’t destroy this country. Violence is not the answer.
We are working between two evils. But like I said, we’ve been able to control these boys, and we’re going to try everything we can. But our word must be credible to them.
Why do the youth want to fight back?
They’re simply bitter, they’re simply angry. They’re simply fed up with it. And they say to themselves that maybe if we fight back, the [Muslims] will know they don’t have the right to take life at will. So it isn’t that their Christian religion is telling them to go out and fight. You forget, in the West, the Crusades were a response to 400 years of Islamic aggression in Europe. Don’t forget that. Don’t you ever forget that. They didn’t just happen for the fun of it.
We pray that [this violence] will never happen again. So, we talk to the governors, Muslim leaders, other agencies. But we have to insist that all those arrested this time must be brought to justice. This is important for future peaceful coexistence. If these boys are arrested but get away with it, then the future is bleak.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
A call to national mourning
By Archbishop Peter Akinola
Church of Nigeria News, February 2006
We have watched with sadness and utter dismay the recent crises in some States in Northern part of this country where many Christians were ruthlessly killed, and Churches and other property wantonly destroyed by some criminals – murderers and arsonists hiding under the guise of religion.
We, however, thank all well-meaning Nigerians who stood in the gap, condemned the dastardly action of the murderers and arsonists. We thank the Sultan, his Eminence, Muhammadu Maccido, for giving leadership to the Islamic community not to allow a spread of the wanton destruction.
We must thank the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero and his men for their valour and responsible behaviour during the trying period.
We have met as leaders of the Christian community in Nigeria and taken the following decisions:
1. We appeal to all tiers of government to find ways and means of ensuring that all Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion are thoroughly educated to know that ours is a multi religious society in which no one part can claim superiority over the other.
2. Law enforcement agencies and the judiciary are requested not to treat those arrested in connection with the wanton destruction with kiddies gloves. They must be treated for who they are: criminals – murderers, arsonists. Arrests made are positive indication that the police are working hard. But we must go beyond that to prosecute and allow the law to take its full course on all found guilty
3. We call on all our state governors to meet as a matter of utmost urgency – solely for coming to the understanding that:
a) Nigeria belongs to all of us.
b) Nigerian Christians have no other place they can call their own, except Nigeria.
c) Agree that there must be mutual respect, tolerance and peaceful co-existence among the entire citizenry in the various states of the country.
4. We call on the faithfuls, who call upon the name of the LORD Jesus the Christ, Christians of all denominations, of all ages – young, old, men, women, clergy, lay to observe a two –day National Mourning for the fallen brethren throughout the country on March 27/28.
During this period of mourning no Christian shall go to work, no shop, market, nor office is to be opened. In other words there shall be no business transactions. This is no holiday – but a time to mourn, weep, repent, and to pray for our country, for all criminally minded people, for the peaceful co-existence among all Nigerians for the peace of the world, for all troubled parts of God’s world.
5. May I repeat, the period of March 27 – 28 has been declared by CAN as a time of sober reflection, mourning, repentance and prayer. For the sake of Nigeria of tomorrow and in the interest of Nigeria of today we call on all the faithful to heed this clarion call.
No form of work at whatever level in these two days is to be undertaken.
May the LORD heal our land. Amen.
Church of Nigeria News, February 2006
We have watched with sadness and utter dismay the recent crises in some States in Northern part of this country where many Christians were ruthlessly killed, and Churches and other property wantonly destroyed by some criminals – murderers and arsonists hiding under the guise of religion.
We, however, thank all well-meaning Nigerians who stood in the gap, condemned the dastardly action of the murderers and arsonists. We thank the Sultan, his Eminence, Muhammadu Maccido, for giving leadership to the Islamic community not to allow a spread of the wanton destruction.
We must thank the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero and his men for their valour and responsible behaviour during the trying period.
We have met as leaders of the Christian community in Nigeria and taken the following decisions:
1. We appeal to all tiers of government to find ways and means of ensuring that all Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion are thoroughly educated to know that ours is a multi religious society in which no one part can claim superiority over the other.
2. Law enforcement agencies and the judiciary are requested not to treat those arrested in connection with the wanton destruction with kiddies gloves. They must be treated for who they are: criminals – murderers, arsonists. Arrests made are positive indication that the police are working hard. But we must go beyond that to prosecute and allow the law to take its full course on all found guilty
3. We call on all our state governors to meet as a matter of utmost urgency – solely for coming to the understanding that:
a) Nigeria belongs to all of us.
b) Nigerian Christians have no other place they can call their own, except Nigeria.
c) Agree that there must be mutual respect, tolerance and peaceful co-existence among the entire citizenry in the various states of the country.
4. We call on the faithfuls, who call upon the name of the LORD Jesus the Christ, Christians of all denominations, of all ages – young, old, men, women, clergy, lay to observe a two –day National Mourning for the fallen brethren throughout the country on March 27/28.
During this period of mourning no Christian shall go to work, no shop, market, nor office is to be opened. In other words there shall be no business transactions. This is no holiday – but a time to mourn, weep, repent, and to pray for our country, for all criminally minded people, for the peaceful co-existence among all Nigerians for the peace of the world, for all troubled parts of God’s world.
5. May I repeat, the period of March 27 – 28 has been declared by CAN as a time of sober reflection, mourning, repentance and prayer. For the sake of Nigeria of tomorrow and in the interest of Nigeria of today we call on all the faithful to heed this clarion call.
No form of work at whatever level in these two days is to be undertaken.
May the LORD heal our land. Amen.
Opening encounter address at Ein El Sukhna
By Rev. Peter J. Akinola
October 2005
It is highly probable that more than a few of us have made our way to this particular Encounter with a sense of pilgrimage to the cradle of our doctrinal formularies – for Egypt comes alive for us in our salvation history especially at the point of the Exodus. How refreshing indeed it is that we are within the vicinity of the great encounters of the Patriarchs.
As we think also of the early centuries of the Christian faith, It is likely that, like pilgrims, our hearts are filled with expectations of what the setting of those early theologians like Origen, the giant of the Alexandrian School (again, not far away from us); Athanasius; and such great teachers of that School such as Didymus the Blind (as far back as 398) looked like as they grappled with divine mysteries which they sought to put in human language and experience for the edification of the Body.
It is a privilege therefore to claim some affinity over the issues that made the Israelites in bondage cry out to God till He sent a deliverer to lead them out of bondage to the promised land, and laid the foundations for the Jewish faith; and also much later, the concerns that burdened the minds of the Church Fathers in those primal days of the undivided Church.
I welcome you, not only from the comfort of your homes, and your busy ministry locations, but also from the arduous physical as well as mental journey through the many fading signposts and dust-covered stations of Christian History. If one must introduce some elements of nostalgia about it, this is like a homecoming, in the sense of an adult returning to the site of his formative years and his kindergarten days. May I then say, welcome home!
I must welcome you, fellow servants of God, to this Encounter to face the reality of our contradictions: we are children of a historically ancient faith and a well established Church tradition who have become more confused about the primer of our most holy faith.
So, why are we here? Let us return again, for a moment, to the world- famous Alexandrian school. They were faced with real threats about the faith and they focused on issues of intellectual liberty in relation to faith, the interpretation of Scripture and Christology. Those were the challenges of their time and how gallantly they fought and won the battles of the faith that they bequeathed to us as the legacy of their generations. So were the intellectual giants of our Communion- William Tyndale, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Richard Hooker, Michael Ramsay and a host of others, God’s gift to His Church, who over the years upheld the historic faith at a great personal cost.
The rude shock of our day is that the battles we were so sure – for hundreds of years – which our well-articulated creeds had won have now become fresh perplexities. The doctrinal convulsions of the past, at which we smiled contentedly, have now become new monsters on the stage. While the secular world fights back terrorism with every possible strategy, using any available arsenal, we seem to be unaware of the more vicious, yet subtle, terrorism that attempts to discard the divine authority of the living Word of God, the Bible. Even though we are a Church that draws inspiration both from the sufficiency of Scripture and the tradition of the Fathers, the weight of allegiance must always tilt unequivocally on the side of the supremacy of the Scriptures as the mind of God and adequate guide for His Church in all matters of faith and doctrine.
Sola Scriptura was the magna carta of the Reformation. In Martin Luther’s famous defence of his writings before the Diet of Worms (April 18, 1521), he declared:
“Unless I am convinced by testimonies of Scripture or evident reason (ratione evidente) - for I believe neither the Pope nor Councils alone, since it is established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves - am the prisoner of the Scriptures cited by me, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God; I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. Here I stand I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen”
The point is this: whenever the theological deposit of the Church Fathers, or Reason, become an alibi for departure from the clear teaching of Scripture, and whenever they constitute a threat to its supremacy, we must return to the authority of the Scriptures and leave no room whatsoever for contradiction.
We are children of time and change, and therefore often swayed by its tides and shifts, which we constantly call ‘paradigms.’ However, our paradigms must take their bearing from our immutable God who is both the God of time and eternity. When our paradigms express new facets in the ceaseless disclosure and revelations consistent with Scriptures (Rom. 11:33), then our progress is assured. But when we roam outside that divine orbit and enthrone fallen human reason and prevailing cultural values as our guiding light, our doom is equally assured.
From our evangelical standpoint, if the Church called out to be ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic’ is to be faithful to its calling, then Mission must remain its chief task in a world whose ‘wheel of life is constantly moving towards non-being and self extinction.’ And the integrity of that mission must be solidly predicated on the condition of the Church as the Missionary Agency.
Perhaps it is also worth noting that while a healthy Church, well nourished on the sacred truths of God’s self-revelation is a veritable instrument for reconciliation both on the horizontal and the vertical dimensions, unhealthy Church that has an unhealthy interest in controversies – a Church that relegates the supremacy of the Scripture to the background will become an embarrassing echo of confused secular ideals, and a travesty of her prophetic mandate.
During the first ever Anglican African Bishops’ Conference (AABC) in October 2004, we had noted the sobering fact that the Church in North Africa gave a disproportionate attention to doctrinal debates almost at the expense of mission. We said inter alia
‘We praise God for the Church Fathers who formulated the church doctrines and creeds that were necessitated by the theological controversies of those days: Tertullian, Athanasius, St Augustine, and Ignatius. They fulfilled their ministry in their generations.’
However, it must be said that they gave such a disproportionate attention to the controversies and definition of the Christian faith that there was hardly any time left for mission and evangelism. There were more of disputations, rancour, division and discord among those who were to do the task of evangelisation. So when in the seventh century the aggressive and militant Islamic forces advanced and struck, they met with little resistance from a church that was unprepared, weak and asleep in terms of mission. Thus, the Church in that part of Africa was wiped out.”
There is the fear of sterility in a constantly growing, innovative and changing world that has now driven us to compromise the historical distinctiveness of the Christian faith and to barter with a world of shifting values and opinions. In a bid to be relevant, we have chosen the cheap option of relaxing on our ethical identity to win the sympathy and tolerance from a world that is ready to write off Christianity and consign it to antiquity.
And by that unfortunate option we are also orchestrating the fact that if the world has a pantheon of opinions, which accommodate and justify any mundane practice (e.g. homosexuality), Christianity, to be relevant, should be made to dance along and find some way to make the Bible acceptable. That is where our sterility and decadence has its roots. If only we had the courage like Luther to say:
“I will not waste a word in arguing with one who does not consider that the Scriptures are the Word of God: we ought not to dispute with a man who thus rejects first principles.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have indeed come a long way since the maiden South-South Encounter held in Limuru, Kenya in 1994, through the second in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1997, resulting in the important “Kuala Lumpur Statement.” Our theme for this Encounter is drawn from our confessions about the Church as enshrined in the Nicene Creed: We believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The One Church
I suppose that most professing Christians would readily agree that the Oneness of the Church is a sacred trust that must be jealously guarded for the Church to fulfil her God-given role in a fragmented and divided world. However else we may understand this unity certain basic doctrinal convictions (in our case, the quadrilateral statement) must be held inviolate as a celebration of our oneness as the people of God. But when the price for our much-cherished Oneness includes a deliberate and wilful demolition of the doctrinal cornerstones of our corporate profession, then we must understand that the rebellious spirit that sponsored the doomed project of the Tower of Babel is at it again.
St. Paul insists, and we all will agree that ‘we are the body of Christ’ but sadly the reality of our time is that while one part of this great body is physically, therefore temporarily, infected or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, for which there is yet no sure cure, another part of it is doctrinally and therefore spiritually, cancerous. This holy assembly must work little harder than ever before to identify distinct ways forward.
The Holy Church
The One (currently sick) Church must be the One, Holy Church. ‘Be ye holy as I am holy’ demands the Lord. Thank God, we cannot lay any claims to a private holiness. Our holiness is derivative. The bible is holy only because it contains the word of the holy God. The Church can be holy only to the extent to which it relates to and is willing to allow God who is the embodiment of holiness to sanctify it. In other words holiness must be by God’s standard, not ours.
Nor is our holiness an end in itself. We are saved to do good works, not to be absorbed by the world for as St Paul in his letter to Titus, (Titus 3: 3-8) reminds us:
‘We too were foolish, disobedient deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another but when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved…And I want you to stress these things so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.’
As the crisis within the Communion is spreading faster so is the cry for oneness becoming louder. But, taking a queue from the lessons of the Reformation we dare argue that the holiness of the Church should not be compromised on the altar of oneness on any false foundation.
The Holy Scripture is replete with guidelines on how to deal with and relate to those who chose to differ from the inspired and established ways of the church. I refer you in particular to the following:
• Matthew 18:17: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
• Ananias and Sapphira; Acts 5:1ff
• Expulsion of an immoral brother; 1 Corinthians 5:1-5:
• Handling divisive brethren, Romans 16:17 ff
Clearly, we must recognize that there are times when to maintain the integrity of the Church of God we are commanded to deal decisively and courageously with every poisonous teaching that is a negation of Biblical principles of holiness in God’s Church.
And let no one hide under the often-abused virtue of love for the LORD our God who commands us to love is the God who demands absolute and loyal obedience to his holy will and commandments.
‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me’; again he says emphatically, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching’; he who does not love me will not obey my teaching.’ (John 14: 21,23, 24)
My brethren, we have no right therefore to continue to disobey certain parts of biblical injunctions and still claim to love Jesus. Obedience to God’s law remains the only true test and clear evidence of our love for God.
The Catholic Church
The universality of the Church means that we are held together by the common confession of the historic, apostolic and orthodox faith by which we share a common claim to the experience of redemption, a common right of adoption, a common outward rite of baptism and a common invisible seal by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No narrow exceptions rooted in race, culture, status, or ability can change this universal identity. Peter writes,
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect “(1 Peter 1:18).
One aspect of this which we regrettably still have to wrestle with is the ‘damaged catholicity of the One, Holy Church’. Brethren, how do we explain our universality in situations in which some arrogantly claim to be ‘the church’ and the rest of us are consigned to the category of ‘others’? Today what we have is a situation of continuing fragmentation of the one church; its commercialization, proliferation, the insatiable appetite for mega structures and superstar syndrome. Nor can we overlook the fact of the huge but hardly justifiable expenditure of time and money we commit to the so-called ecumenical talks- talks that are often frustrating than fulfilling.
The Apostolic Church
The Apostolic deposit from which we learn of the ministry of Jesus Christ remains the most reliable link between the recipient Church and the Church of subsequent ages. All we seek to do in the context of the confusion all around us is simply to maintain the faith ‘once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3) and to build on the foundation of the Apostles (Eph 2:20).
Furthermore, to be faithfully apostolic at a time such as this is not only to be one with them in faith and doctrine but also in constantly seeking to be like them in total dedication, commitment and practice of mission; in engagement with the erring world around us with a view to transforming it to conform to the mind of Christ and in the onerous task of evangelization so that the church may grow not just by mere additions but by multiplication. That is the New Testament witness. And that must be the Church’s first concern.
As I conclude, it needs re-echoing that we (as Global South) have not been faithful and forthright enough in seeking to fulfil our prophetic role within the Communion. Hence, we continue to pay the high price for the sad fact of our ever-widening departure from the Bible as a worldwide Communion – all because we have reneged on matters that required a firm position.
As we consider the theme, The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we do so prayerfully seeking the face of our God to renew our faith in a decaying world that now threatens even the sanctity of His Church. We must reaffirm, in the words of Richard Chatres, Bishop of London, that “The Church of God, Orthodox, Reformed, Catholic, and Apostolic, is still alive and marching on in creative mission and evangelism” – and the gates of hell cannot overcome it!
That is our Lord’s promise, and it cannot fail!
Amen.
October 2005
It is highly probable that more than a few of us have made our way to this particular Encounter with a sense of pilgrimage to the cradle of our doctrinal formularies – for Egypt comes alive for us in our salvation history especially at the point of the Exodus. How refreshing indeed it is that we are within the vicinity of the great encounters of the Patriarchs.
As we think also of the early centuries of the Christian faith, It is likely that, like pilgrims, our hearts are filled with expectations of what the setting of those early theologians like Origen, the giant of the Alexandrian School (again, not far away from us); Athanasius; and such great teachers of that School such as Didymus the Blind (as far back as 398) looked like as they grappled with divine mysteries which they sought to put in human language and experience for the edification of the Body.
It is a privilege therefore to claim some affinity over the issues that made the Israelites in bondage cry out to God till He sent a deliverer to lead them out of bondage to the promised land, and laid the foundations for the Jewish faith; and also much later, the concerns that burdened the minds of the Church Fathers in those primal days of the undivided Church.
I welcome you, not only from the comfort of your homes, and your busy ministry locations, but also from the arduous physical as well as mental journey through the many fading signposts and dust-covered stations of Christian History. If one must introduce some elements of nostalgia about it, this is like a homecoming, in the sense of an adult returning to the site of his formative years and his kindergarten days. May I then say, welcome home!
I must welcome you, fellow servants of God, to this Encounter to face the reality of our contradictions: we are children of a historically ancient faith and a well established Church tradition who have become more confused about the primer of our most holy faith.
So, why are we here? Let us return again, for a moment, to the world- famous Alexandrian school. They were faced with real threats about the faith and they focused on issues of intellectual liberty in relation to faith, the interpretation of Scripture and Christology. Those were the challenges of their time and how gallantly they fought and won the battles of the faith that they bequeathed to us as the legacy of their generations. So were the intellectual giants of our Communion- William Tyndale, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Richard Hooker, Michael Ramsay and a host of others, God’s gift to His Church, who over the years upheld the historic faith at a great personal cost.
The rude shock of our day is that the battles we were so sure – for hundreds of years – which our well-articulated creeds had won have now become fresh perplexities. The doctrinal convulsions of the past, at which we smiled contentedly, have now become new monsters on the stage. While the secular world fights back terrorism with every possible strategy, using any available arsenal, we seem to be unaware of the more vicious, yet subtle, terrorism that attempts to discard the divine authority of the living Word of God, the Bible. Even though we are a Church that draws inspiration both from the sufficiency of Scripture and the tradition of the Fathers, the weight of allegiance must always tilt unequivocally on the side of the supremacy of the Scriptures as the mind of God and adequate guide for His Church in all matters of faith and doctrine.
Sola Scriptura was the magna carta of the Reformation. In Martin Luther’s famous defence of his writings before the Diet of Worms (April 18, 1521), he declared:
“Unless I am convinced by testimonies of Scripture or evident reason (ratione evidente) - for I believe neither the Pope nor Councils alone, since it is established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves - am the prisoner of the Scriptures cited by me, and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God; I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. Here I stand I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen”
The point is this: whenever the theological deposit of the Church Fathers, or Reason, become an alibi for departure from the clear teaching of Scripture, and whenever they constitute a threat to its supremacy, we must return to the authority of the Scriptures and leave no room whatsoever for contradiction.
We are children of time and change, and therefore often swayed by its tides and shifts, which we constantly call ‘paradigms.’ However, our paradigms must take their bearing from our immutable God who is both the God of time and eternity. When our paradigms express new facets in the ceaseless disclosure and revelations consistent with Scriptures (Rom. 11:33), then our progress is assured. But when we roam outside that divine orbit and enthrone fallen human reason and prevailing cultural values as our guiding light, our doom is equally assured.
From our evangelical standpoint, if the Church called out to be ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic’ is to be faithful to its calling, then Mission must remain its chief task in a world whose ‘wheel of life is constantly moving towards non-being and self extinction.’ And the integrity of that mission must be solidly predicated on the condition of the Church as the Missionary Agency.
Perhaps it is also worth noting that while a healthy Church, well nourished on the sacred truths of God’s self-revelation is a veritable instrument for reconciliation both on the horizontal and the vertical dimensions, unhealthy Church that has an unhealthy interest in controversies – a Church that relegates the supremacy of the Scripture to the background will become an embarrassing echo of confused secular ideals, and a travesty of her prophetic mandate.
During the first ever Anglican African Bishops’ Conference (AABC) in October 2004, we had noted the sobering fact that the Church in North Africa gave a disproportionate attention to doctrinal debates almost at the expense of mission. We said inter alia
‘We praise God for the Church Fathers who formulated the church doctrines and creeds that were necessitated by the theological controversies of those days: Tertullian, Athanasius, St Augustine, and Ignatius. They fulfilled their ministry in their generations.’
However, it must be said that they gave such a disproportionate attention to the controversies and definition of the Christian faith that there was hardly any time left for mission and evangelism. There were more of disputations, rancour, division and discord among those who were to do the task of evangelisation. So when in the seventh century the aggressive and militant Islamic forces advanced and struck, they met with little resistance from a church that was unprepared, weak and asleep in terms of mission. Thus, the Church in that part of Africa was wiped out.”
There is the fear of sterility in a constantly growing, innovative and changing world that has now driven us to compromise the historical distinctiveness of the Christian faith and to barter with a world of shifting values and opinions. In a bid to be relevant, we have chosen the cheap option of relaxing on our ethical identity to win the sympathy and tolerance from a world that is ready to write off Christianity and consign it to antiquity.
And by that unfortunate option we are also orchestrating the fact that if the world has a pantheon of opinions, which accommodate and justify any mundane practice (e.g. homosexuality), Christianity, to be relevant, should be made to dance along and find some way to make the Bible acceptable. That is where our sterility and decadence has its roots. If only we had the courage like Luther to say:
“I will not waste a word in arguing with one who does not consider that the Scriptures are the Word of God: we ought not to dispute with a man who thus rejects first principles.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have indeed come a long way since the maiden South-South Encounter held in Limuru, Kenya in 1994, through the second in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1997, resulting in the important “Kuala Lumpur Statement.” Our theme for this Encounter is drawn from our confessions about the Church as enshrined in the Nicene Creed: We believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The One Church
I suppose that most professing Christians would readily agree that the Oneness of the Church is a sacred trust that must be jealously guarded for the Church to fulfil her God-given role in a fragmented and divided world. However else we may understand this unity certain basic doctrinal convictions (in our case, the quadrilateral statement) must be held inviolate as a celebration of our oneness as the people of God. But when the price for our much-cherished Oneness includes a deliberate and wilful demolition of the doctrinal cornerstones of our corporate profession, then we must understand that the rebellious spirit that sponsored the doomed project of the Tower of Babel is at it again.
St. Paul insists, and we all will agree that ‘we are the body of Christ’ but sadly the reality of our time is that while one part of this great body is physically, therefore temporarily, infected or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, for which there is yet no sure cure, another part of it is doctrinally and therefore spiritually, cancerous. This holy assembly must work little harder than ever before to identify distinct ways forward.
The Holy Church
The One (currently sick) Church must be the One, Holy Church. ‘Be ye holy as I am holy’ demands the Lord. Thank God, we cannot lay any claims to a private holiness. Our holiness is derivative. The bible is holy only because it contains the word of the holy God. The Church can be holy only to the extent to which it relates to and is willing to allow God who is the embodiment of holiness to sanctify it. In other words holiness must be by God’s standard, not ours.
Nor is our holiness an end in itself. We are saved to do good works, not to be absorbed by the world for as St Paul in his letter to Titus, (Titus 3: 3-8) reminds us:
‘We too were foolish, disobedient deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another but when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved…And I want you to stress these things so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.’
As the crisis within the Communion is spreading faster so is the cry for oneness becoming louder. But, taking a queue from the lessons of the Reformation we dare argue that the holiness of the Church should not be compromised on the altar of oneness on any false foundation.
The Holy Scripture is replete with guidelines on how to deal with and relate to those who chose to differ from the inspired and established ways of the church. I refer you in particular to the following:
• Matthew 18:17: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
• Ananias and Sapphira; Acts 5:1ff
• Expulsion of an immoral brother; 1 Corinthians 5:1-5:
• Handling divisive brethren, Romans 16:17 ff
Clearly, we must recognize that there are times when to maintain the integrity of the Church of God we are commanded to deal decisively and courageously with every poisonous teaching that is a negation of Biblical principles of holiness in God’s Church.
And let no one hide under the often-abused virtue of love for the LORD our God who commands us to love is the God who demands absolute and loyal obedience to his holy will and commandments.
‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me’; again he says emphatically, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching’; he who does not love me will not obey my teaching.’ (John 14: 21,23, 24)
My brethren, we have no right therefore to continue to disobey certain parts of biblical injunctions and still claim to love Jesus. Obedience to God’s law remains the only true test and clear evidence of our love for God.
The Catholic Church
The universality of the Church means that we are held together by the common confession of the historic, apostolic and orthodox faith by which we share a common claim to the experience of redemption, a common right of adoption, a common outward rite of baptism and a common invisible seal by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No narrow exceptions rooted in race, culture, status, or ability can change this universal identity. Peter writes,
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect “(1 Peter 1:18).
One aspect of this which we regrettably still have to wrestle with is the ‘damaged catholicity of the One, Holy Church’. Brethren, how do we explain our universality in situations in which some arrogantly claim to be ‘the church’ and the rest of us are consigned to the category of ‘others’? Today what we have is a situation of continuing fragmentation of the one church; its commercialization, proliferation, the insatiable appetite for mega structures and superstar syndrome. Nor can we overlook the fact of the huge but hardly justifiable expenditure of time and money we commit to the so-called ecumenical talks- talks that are often frustrating than fulfilling.
The Apostolic Church
The Apostolic deposit from which we learn of the ministry of Jesus Christ remains the most reliable link between the recipient Church and the Church of subsequent ages. All we seek to do in the context of the confusion all around us is simply to maintain the faith ‘once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3) and to build on the foundation of the Apostles (Eph 2:20).
Furthermore, to be faithfully apostolic at a time such as this is not only to be one with them in faith and doctrine but also in constantly seeking to be like them in total dedication, commitment and practice of mission; in engagement with the erring world around us with a view to transforming it to conform to the mind of Christ and in the onerous task of evangelization so that the church may grow not just by mere additions but by multiplication. That is the New Testament witness. And that must be the Church’s first concern.
As I conclude, it needs re-echoing that we (as Global South) have not been faithful and forthright enough in seeking to fulfil our prophetic role within the Communion. Hence, we continue to pay the high price for the sad fact of our ever-widening departure from the Bible as a worldwide Communion – all because we have reneged on matters that required a firm position.
As we consider the theme, The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we do so prayerfully seeking the face of our God to renew our faith in a decaying world that now threatens even the sanctity of His Church. We must reaffirm, in the words of Richard Chatres, Bishop of London, that “The Church of God, Orthodox, Reformed, Catholic, and Apostolic, is still alive and marching on in creative mission and evangelism” – and the gates of hell cannot overcome it!
That is our Lord’s promise, and it cannot fail!
Amen.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Akinola’s position on homosexuality within the Anglican Communion
Looking at it from the Nigerian perspective
Background for Discussion
Archbishop Peter Akinola’s opposition to the consecration of homosexual bishops and the blessing of same sex marriages cannot be viewed from strictly scriptural or human rights perspectives. Although these are certainly relevant and powerful perspectives
within the dialogue (or dual monologues), they are not at the heart of what drives Akinola’s aggressive stance on the issue of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion and the US Episcopal Church’s progressive (and admittedly nontraditional) views.
Akinola’s words and actions must be considered first within the context of the historical and ongoing conflict between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria. While Akinola consistently argues the immorality of homosexuality and refers to scripture and the traditions of the Anglican Communion to advocate his position, he has also noted that the Anglican Church in Nigeria cannot politically or physically survive if it is seen (even vaguely) as accepting homosexuality.
Even if he were personally inclined to be more progressive in his views, Akinola believes that he cannot afford to associate with the US Episcopal Church now for fear that the “enemies” of the Anglican Church in Nigeria will use that relationship as proof of the moral depravity and thus illegitimacy of Anglicanism and Christianity in general.
The enemies, of course, are Muslims, which account for 50-55% of Nigeria’s population. The remaining 40-45% of Nigerians are Christians. It is this relative balance that creates a conflict situation between the two religions, as each competes for advantages, more dominance. Each religion feels threatened by the other. Christians live in fear of violent persecution by Muslims. Muslims have the same fear of Christians. Both fear the possibility of a religious war and possibly genocide instigated by the other. There is plenty of history between the two religions in Nigeria to justify this fear.
In such a delicate situation, Akinola sees little room to maneuver, particularly given that Muslims in Nigeria began applying and enforcing Sharia religious law during the 1990s. In extreme cases, non-Muslims can be subjected to Islamic civil, criminal, and family law. Christians could suffer a range of physical punishments ordained by Sharia tradition, including floggings, mutilations, and death.
Akinola and Christians in Nigeria fear Sharia and feel they do not have the “luxury” of being more accepting or tolerant of behaviors that are seen as immoral and insulting to God… even if they wanted to. On the contrary, they feel they must be inquestionably purer, more religiously orthodox than Muslims so as not to be at risk of the draconian Sharia punishments.
Questions for Discussion
Assuming that Akinola and the Anglican Church in Nigeria are responding to the US Episcopal Church’s positions on homosexuality more out of fear for their very survival than a theological disagreement over scriptural interpretation, anger over the seeming break with tradition, or a desire to judge and condemn what they see as sinful, do Akinola’s words and actions seem more reasonable… even if they feel offensive, unjust, and perhaps even evil?
If by moderating his position for the sake of unity within the Anglican Communion and for the sake of upholding the equal rights of gays and lesbians, Akinola created a political and religious environment in Nigeria that led to the persecution and death of millions of Christians in that country, would it be worth it?
To what extent should the US Episcopal Church’s position on issues like homosexuality (on which there is a wide theological and cultural divergence within the Anglican Communion) be sensitive to the impact it can have on fueling political instability and even war and genocide in other countries?
If there is such a wide religious and cultural divergence within the Anglican Communion, is it unreasonable (from a practical standpoint) to assume that US Episcopalians can remain within the Communion without causing a lot of trouble?
Can the US Episcopal Church do more good and be more effective by acknowledging irreconcilable differences and simply opting to leave the Anglican Communion rather than continuing to take on Akinola, African Anglicans, and conservative US Episcopalians that have decided to leave ECUSA?
What are the pros and cons of such a move? Is the eventual expulsion of the US Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion a given? And if so, would it be better for the US Episcopal Church to pre-empt this expulsion and leave on its own terms?
-Marco
Background for Discussion
Archbishop Peter Akinola’s opposition to the consecration of homosexual bishops and the blessing of same sex marriages cannot be viewed from strictly scriptural or human rights perspectives. Although these are certainly relevant and powerful perspectives
within the dialogue (or dual monologues), they are not at the heart of what drives Akinola’s aggressive stance on the issue of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion and the US Episcopal Church’s progressive (and admittedly nontraditional) views.
Akinola’s words and actions must be considered first within the context of the historical and ongoing conflict between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria. While Akinola consistently argues the immorality of homosexuality and refers to scripture and the traditions of the Anglican Communion to advocate his position, he has also noted that the Anglican Church in Nigeria cannot politically or physically survive if it is seen (even vaguely) as accepting homosexuality.
Even if he were personally inclined to be more progressive in his views, Akinola believes that he cannot afford to associate with the US Episcopal Church now for fear that the “enemies” of the Anglican Church in Nigeria will use that relationship as proof of the moral depravity and thus illegitimacy of Anglicanism and Christianity in general.
The enemies, of course, are Muslims, which account for 50-55% of Nigeria’s population. The remaining 40-45% of Nigerians are Christians. It is this relative balance that creates a conflict situation between the two religions, as each competes for advantages, more dominance. Each religion feels threatened by the other. Christians live in fear of violent persecution by Muslims. Muslims have the same fear of Christians. Both fear the possibility of a religious war and possibly genocide instigated by the other. There is plenty of history between the two religions in Nigeria to justify this fear.
In such a delicate situation, Akinola sees little room to maneuver, particularly given that Muslims in Nigeria began applying and enforcing Sharia religious law during the 1990s. In extreme cases, non-Muslims can be subjected to Islamic civil, criminal, and family law. Christians could suffer a range of physical punishments ordained by Sharia tradition, including floggings, mutilations, and death.
Akinola and Christians in Nigeria fear Sharia and feel they do not have the “luxury” of being more accepting or tolerant of behaviors that are seen as immoral and insulting to God… even if they wanted to. On the contrary, they feel they must be inquestionably purer, more religiously orthodox than Muslims so as not to be at risk of the draconian Sharia punishments.
Questions for Discussion
Assuming that Akinola and the Anglican Church in Nigeria are responding to the US Episcopal Church’s positions on homosexuality more out of fear for their very survival than a theological disagreement over scriptural interpretation, anger over the seeming break with tradition, or a desire to judge and condemn what they see as sinful, do Akinola’s words and actions seem more reasonable… even if they feel offensive, unjust, and perhaps even evil?
If by moderating his position for the sake of unity within the Anglican Communion and for the sake of upholding the equal rights of gays and lesbians, Akinola created a political and religious environment in Nigeria that led to the persecution and death of millions of Christians in that country, would it be worth it?
To what extent should the US Episcopal Church’s position on issues like homosexuality (on which there is a wide theological and cultural divergence within the Anglican Communion) be sensitive to the impact it can have on fueling political instability and even war and genocide in other countries?
If there is such a wide religious and cultural divergence within the Anglican Communion, is it unreasonable (from a practical standpoint) to assume that US Episcopalians can remain within the Communion without causing a lot of trouble?
Can the US Episcopal Church do more good and be more effective by acknowledging irreconcilable differences and simply opting to leave the Anglican Communion rather than continuing to take on Akinola, African Anglicans, and conservative US Episcopalians that have decided to leave ECUSA?
What are the pros and cons of such a move? Is the eventual expulsion of the US Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion a given? And if so, would it be better for the US Episcopal Church to pre-empt this expulsion and leave on its own terms?
-Marco
Monday, May 14, 2007
At axis of Episcopal split, an anti-gay Nigerian
Chris Greenberg/Associated Press
December 25, 2006
The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person’s hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.
Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria’s Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head in wonder and horror.
“This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, ‘Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh!’ I jumped back.”
Archbishop Akinola, a man whose international reputation has largely been built on his tough stance against homosexuality, has become the spiritual head of 21 conservative churches in the United States. They opted to leave the Episcopal Church over its decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop and allow churches to bless same-sex unions. Among the eight Virginia churches to announce they had joined the archbishop’s fold last week are The Falls Church and Truro Church, two large, historic and wealthy parishes.
In a move attacked by some church leaders as a violation of geographical boundaries, Archbishop Akinola has created an offshoot of his Nigerian church in North America for the discontented Americans. In doing so, he has made himself the kingpin of a remarkable alliance between theological conservatives in North America and the developing world that could tip the power to conservatives in the Anglican Communion, a 77-million member confederation of national churches that trace their roots to the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“He sees himself as the spokesperson for a new Anglicanism, and thus is a direct challenge to the historic authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said the Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
The 62-year-old son of an illiterate widow, Archbishop Akinola now heads not only Nigeria — the most populous province, or region, in the Anglican Communion, with at least 17 million members — but also the organizations representing the leaders of Anglican provinces in Africa and the developing world. He has also become the most visible advocate for a literal interpretation of Scripture, challenging the traditional Anglican approach of embracing diverse theological viewpoints.
“Why didn’t God make a lion to be a man’s companion?” Archbishop Akinola said at his office here in Abuja. “Why didn’t he make a tree to be a man’s companion? Or better still, why didn’t he make another man to be man’s companion? So even from the creation story, you can see that the mind of God, God’s intention, is for man and woman to be together.”
Archbishop Akinola’s views on homosexuality — that it is an abomination akin to bestiality and pedophilia — are fairly mainstream here. Nigeria is a deeply religious country, evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and attitudes toward homosexuality, women’s rights and marriage are dictated largely by scripture and enforced by deep social taboos.
Archbishop Akinola spoke forcefully about his unswerving convictions against homosexuality, the ordination of women and the rise of what he called “the liberal agenda,” which he said had “infiltrated our seminaries” in the Anglican Communion.
This view emanating from the developing world is hardly unique to the Anglican church. More and more, churches of many denominations in what many Christian leaders call the “global south,” encompassing Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, which share these views, are surging as church attendance lags in developed countries.
Bishop Martyn Minns, the rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., who was consecrated by Archbishop Akinola this year to serve as his missionary bishop in North America, said Archbishop Akinola was motivated by a conviction that the Anglican Communion must change its colonial-era leadership structure and mentality.
“He doesn’t want to be the man; he just no longer wants to be the boy,” Bishop Minns said. “He wants to be treated as an equal leader, with equal respect.”
Even among Anglican conservatives, Archbishop Akinola is not universally beloved. In November 2005, he published a letter purporting to be from the leaders, known as primates, of provinces in the global south. It called Europe a “spiritual desert” and criticized the Church of England. Three of the bishops who supposedly signed it later denied adding their names. Some bishops in southern Africa have also challenged his fixation with homosexuality, when AIDS and poverty are a crisis for the continent.
He has been chastised more recently for creating a missionary branch of the Nigerian church in the United States, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, despite Anglican rules and traditions prohibiting bishops from taking control of churches or priests not in their territory.
“There are primates who are very, very concerned about it,” said Archbishop Drexel Gomez, the primate of the West Indies, because “it introduces more fragmentation.”
Other conservative American churches that have split from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Anglican Communion, have aligned themselves with other archbishops, in Rwanda, Uganda and several provinces in Latin America — often because they already had ties to these provinces through mission work.
Archbishop Gomez said he understood Archbishop Akinola’s actions because the American conservatives felt an urgent need to leave the Episcopal Church and were unwilling to wait for a new covenant being written for the Anglican Communion. The new covenant is a lengthy and uncertain process led by Archbishop Gomez that some conservatives hope will eventually end the impasse over homosexuality.
One of Archbishop Akinola’s principal arguments, often heard from other conservatives as well, is that Christianity in Nigeria, a country where religious violence has killed tens of thousands in the past decade, must guard its flank lest Islam overtake it. “The church is in the midst of Islam,” he said. “Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die.”
He supports a bill in Nigeria’s legislature that would make homosexual sex and any public expression of homosexual identity a crime punishable by five years in prison.
The bill ostensibly aims to ban gay marriage, but it includes measures so extreme that the State Department warned that they would violate basic human rights. Strictly interpreted, the bill would ban two gay people from going out to dinner or seeing a movie together.
It could also lead to the arrest and imprisonment of members of organizations providing all manner of services, particularly those helping people with AIDS.
“They are very loose, those provisions,” said Dorothy Aken ’Ova of the International Center for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, a charity that works with rape victims, AIDS patients and gay rights groups. “It could target just about anyone, based on any form of perception from anybody.”
Archbishop Akinola said he supported any law that limited marriage to heterosexuals, but declined to say whether he supported the specific provisions criminalizing gay associations. “No bishop in this church will go out and say, ‘This man is gay, put him in jail,’ ” the archbishop said. But, he added, Nigeria has the right to pass such a law if it reflects the country’s values.
“Does Nigeria tell America what laws to make?” he said. “Does Nigeria tell England what laws to make? This arrogance, this imperial tendency, should stop for God’s sake.”
Though he insisted that he was not seeking power or influence, he is clearly relishing the curious role reversal of African archbishops sending missionaries to a Western society he sees as increasingly godless.
Asked whether his installing a bishop in the United States violated the church’s longstanding rules, he responded heatedly that he was simply doing what Western churches had done for centuries, sending a bishop to serve Anglicans where there is no church to provide one.
Archbishop Akinola argues that the Convocation, his group in the United States, was established last year to serve Nigerian Anglicans unhappy with the direction of the Episcopal Church, and eventually began to attract non-Nigerians who shared their views. Other church officials and experts say Archbishop Akinola’s intention for the Convocation was to attract Americans and become a rival to the Episcopal Church.
“Self-seeking, self-glory, that is not me,” he said. “No. Many people say I embarrass them with my humility.”
Anyone who criticizes him as power-seeking is simply trying to undermine his message, he said. “The more they demonize, the stronger the works of God,” he said.
December 25, 2006
The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person’s hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.
Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria’s Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head in wonder and horror.
“This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, ‘Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh!’ I jumped back.”
Archbishop Akinola, a man whose international reputation has largely been built on his tough stance against homosexuality, has become the spiritual head of 21 conservative churches in the United States. They opted to leave the Episcopal Church over its decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop and allow churches to bless same-sex unions. Among the eight Virginia churches to announce they had joined the archbishop’s fold last week are The Falls Church and Truro Church, two large, historic and wealthy parishes.
In a move attacked by some church leaders as a violation of geographical boundaries, Archbishop Akinola has created an offshoot of his Nigerian church in North America for the discontented Americans. In doing so, he has made himself the kingpin of a remarkable alliance between theological conservatives in North America and the developing world that could tip the power to conservatives in the Anglican Communion, a 77-million member confederation of national churches that trace their roots to the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“He sees himself as the spokesperson for a new Anglicanism, and thus is a direct challenge to the historic authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said the Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
The 62-year-old son of an illiterate widow, Archbishop Akinola now heads not only Nigeria — the most populous province, or region, in the Anglican Communion, with at least 17 million members — but also the organizations representing the leaders of Anglican provinces in Africa and the developing world. He has also become the most visible advocate for a literal interpretation of Scripture, challenging the traditional Anglican approach of embracing diverse theological viewpoints.
“Why didn’t God make a lion to be a man’s companion?” Archbishop Akinola said at his office here in Abuja. “Why didn’t he make a tree to be a man’s companion? Or better still, why didn’t he make another man to be man’s companion? So even from the creation story, you can see that the mind of God, God’s intention, is for man and woman to be together.”
Archbishop Akinola’s views on homosexuality — that it is an abomination akin to bestiality and pedophilia — are fairly mainstream here. Nigeria is a deeply religious country, evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and attitudes toward homosexuality, women’s rights and marriage are dictated largely by scripture and enforced by deep social taboos.
Archbishop Akinola spoke forcefully about his unswerving convictions against homosexuality, the ordination of women and the rise of what he called “the liberal agenda,” which he said had “infiltrated our seminaries” in the Anglican Communion.
This view emanating from the developing world is hardly unique to the Anglican church. More and more, churches of many denominations in what many Christian leaders call the “global south,” encompassing Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, which share these views, are surging as church attendance lags in developed countries.
Bishop Martyn Minns, the rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., who was consecrated by Archbishop Akinola this year to serve as his missionary bishop in North America, said Archbishop Akinola was motivated by a conviction that the Anglican Communion must change its colonial-era leadership structure and mentality.
“He doesn’t want to be the man; he just no longer wants to be the boy,” Bishop Minns said. “He wants to be treated as an equal leader, with equal respect.”
Even among Anglican conservatives, Archbishop Akinola is not universally beloved. In November 2005, he published a letter purporting to be from the leaders, known as primates, of provinces in the global south. It called Europe a “spiritual desert” and criticized the Church of England. Three of the bishops who supposedly signed it later denied adding their names. Some bishops in southern Africa have also challenged his fixation with homosexuality, when AIDS and poverty are a crisis for the continent.
He has been chastised more recently for creating a missionary branch of the Nigerian church in the United States, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, despite Anglican rules and traditions prohibiting bishops from taking control of churches or priests not in their territory.
“There are primates who are very, very concerned about it,” said Archbishop Drexel Gomez, the primate of the West Indies, because “it introduces more fragmentation.”
Other conservative American churches that have split from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Anglican Communion, have aligned themselves with other archbishops, in Rwanda, Uganda and several provinces in Latin America — often because they already had ties to these provinces through mission work.
Archbishop Gomez said he understood Archbishop Akinola’s actions because the American conservatives felt an urgent need to leave the Episcopal Church and were unwilling to wait for a new covenant being written for the Anglican Communion. The new covenant is a lengthy and uncertain process led by Archbishop Gomez that some conservatives hope will eventually end the impasse over homosexuality.
One of Archbishop Akinola’s principal arguments, often heard from other conservatives as well, is that Christianity in Nigeria, a country where religious violence has killed tens of thousands in the past decade, must guard its flank lest Islam overtake it. “The church is in the midst of Islam,” he said. “Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die.”
He supports a bill in Nigeria’s legislature that would make homosexual sex and any public expression of homosexual identity a crime punishable by five years in prison.
The bill ostensibly aims to ban gay marriage, but it includes measures so extreme that the State Department warned that they would violate basic human rights. Strictly interpreted, the bill would ban two gay people from going out to dinner or seeing a movie together.
It could also lead to the arrest and imprisonment of members of organizations providing all manner of services, particularly those helping people with AIDS.
“They are very loose, those provisions,” said Dorothy Aken ’Ova of the International Center for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, a charity that works with rape victims, AIDS patients and gay rights groups. “It could target just about anyone, based on any form of perception from anybody.”
Archbishop Akinola said he supported any law that limited marriage to heterosexuals, but declined to say whether he supported the specific provisions criminalizing gay associations. “No bishop in this church will go out and say, ‘This man is gay, put him in jail,’ ” the archbishop said. But, he added, Nigeria has the right to pass such a law if it reflects the country’s values.
“Does Nigeria tell America what laws to make?” he said. “Does Nigeria tell England what laws to make? This arrogance, this imperial tendency, should stop for God’s sake.”
Though he insisted that he was not seeking power or influence, he is clearly relishing the curious role reversal of African archbishops sending missionaries to a Western society he sees as increasingly godless.
Asked whether his installing a bishop in the United States violated the church’s longstanding rules, he responded heatedly that he was simply doing what Western churches had done for centuries, sending a bishop to serve Anglicans where there is no church to provide one.
Archbishop Akinola argues that the Convocation, his group in the United States, was established last year to serve Nigerian Anglicans unhappy with the direction of the Episcopal Church, and eventually began to attract non-Nigerians who shared their views. Other church officials and experts say Archbishop Akinola’s intention for the Convocation was to attract Americans and become a rival to the Episcopal Church.
“Self-seeking, self-glory, that is not me,” he said. “No. Many people say I embarrass them with my humility.”
Anyone who criticizes him as power-seeking is simply trying to undermine his message, he said. “The more they demonize, the stronger the works of God,” he said.
The Nigerian sodomy law
Drawing depicting life in Enugu prison, Nigeria, by former inmate Arthur Judah Angel. © AI
The Nigerian Federal government has introduced a legislation that, if passed, would introduce criminal penalties for relationships and marriage ceremonies between persons of the same sex as well as for public advocacy or associations supporting the rights of lesbian and gay people, in contravention of fundamental freedoms guaranteed under the Nigerian Constitution and Nigeria's obligations under international and regional human rights law.
The broad and sweeping provisions of this proposed legislation could lead to the imprisonment of individuals solely for their actual or imputed sexual orientation in a number of ways, including for consensual sexual relations in private, advocacy of lesbian and gay rights, or public expression of their sexual identity. Anyone imprisoned under this law would be a prisoner of conscience.
This proposed legislation is contrary to Nigeria's obligations to all people in Nigeria. Under international human rights law, the Federal Republic of Nigeria has the obligation to respect, promote and protect the human rights of its population, without distinction of any kind. The proposed legislation not only contravenes internationally recognized protections against discrimination, rights to freedom of expression, conscience, association, and assembly, but also undermines Nigeria's struggle to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The Proposed Legislation
On January 19,2006, Minister of Justice Bayo Ojo presented to the Federal Executive Council an "Act to Make Provisions for the Prohibition of Relationship Between Persons of the Same Sex, Celebration of Marriage by Them, and for Other Matters Connected Therewith." According to a draft of the bill, the law would provide five years imprisonment for any person who "goes through the ceremony of marriage with a person of the same sex," "performs, witnesses, aids or abets the ceremony of same sex marriage," or "is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private." Anyone, including a priest or cleric, aiding or abetting such a union would be subject to the same prison term. The draft bill would also prohibit the registration of gay organizations, any public display of a "same sex amorous relationship," and adoption of children by lesbian or gay couples or individuals. In addition, the draft bill would invalidate same sex relationship formally entered into or recognized in foreign jurisdictions.
The bill received its first reading in the Senate on April 11, 2006 at which the provisions were widened further still. It is now proposed that any individual who witness, celebrates with or supports couples involved in same-sex relationships would also be subject to a prison term.
Consequences of the Proposed Legislation
Even before the bill has been passed or even submitted to the National Assembly for consideration, reports from human rights activists in Nigeria suggest that some individuals are already interpreting the draft legislation as a signal that the government will not prosecute people who assault or otherwise intimidate LGBT individuals. This may lead to a situation of impunity for attacks on LGBT individuals.
Laws criminalizing homosexuality may also act as a "licence" to torture and ill treatment. By institutionalizing discrimination, they can act as an official incitement to violence against lesbians and gay men in the community as a whole, whether in police custody or prison, on the street or in the home. By stripping a sector of the population of their full rights, laws which criminalize homosexuality also deprive lesbian and gay victims of human rights violations of access to redress. These laws also risk to allow those who have abused LGBT individuals to escape justice, and potentially to continue to abuse others with impunity.
This bill would also impede effective HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. While the prevailing pattern of HIV transmission in Nigeria, as elsewhere in the continent, is overwhelmingly heterosexual, the government will damage its own prevention efforts by driving populations already suffering stigma for their sexual conduct still further underground – not only making it more difficult for outreach and education efforts to reach them, but potentially criminalizing civil society groups engaged in that vital work. Nigeria's AIDS prevention programs have previously been criticized by their neglect of the particular risks facing men who have sex with men (MSM).
Existing Laws against LGBT People in Nigeria
Chapter 42, section 214 of Nigeria's criminal code penalizes consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults with fourteen years' imprisonment. Furthermore, Sharia penal codes, as introduced in northern Nigeria since 1999, continues to criminalize what is termed as "sodomy" .
Amnesty International considers the use of "sodomy" laws to imprison individuals for consensual same-sex relations in private is a grave violation of human rights, including the rights to privacy, to freedom from discrimination, to freedom of expression and association, which are protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Reinforcing these existing provisions with new legislation displays an intent to codify and intensify prejudice based on sexual orientation. Moreover, by criminalizing acts of peaceful expression or association in defense of LGBT rights, the bill would strike at the fundamental freedoms enjoyed by all individuals in Nigeria's long-vigorous civil society.
Proposed Law Contravenes International and Regional Human Rights Law
The proposed law contradicts fundamental freedoms under the Nigerian Constitution and international and regional human rights law and standards.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights affirms the equality of all people. Its article 2 states: "Every individual shall be entitled to the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms recognized and guaranteed in the present Charter without distinction of any kind such as race, ethnic group, color, sex, language, religion, political or any other opinion, national and social origin, fortune, birth or other status." Article 3 guarantees every individual equality before the law. Further, its article 26 prescribes that "Every individual shall have the duty to respect and consider his fellow beings without discrimination, and to maintain relations aimed at promoting, safeguarding and reinforcing mutual respect and tolerance."
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Nigeria acceded without reservations in 1993, protects the rights to freedom of expression (article 19), freedom of conscience (article 18), freedom of assembly (article 21) and freedom of association (article 22). It affirms the equality of all people before the law and the right to freedom from discrimination in articles 2 and 26. In the landmark 1994 case of Toonen v Australia, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors states' compliance with the ICCPR, held that sexual orientation should be understood to be a status protected from discrimination under these articles. States cannot curtail the enjoyment of human rights on the basis of sexual orientation. The UN Human Rights Committee has since urged states not only to repeal laws criminalizing homosexuality but also to enshrine the prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation into their constitutions or other fundamental laws. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is also prohibited under other international human rights treaties to which Nigeria is a state party.
This law, if passed, would seriously restrict essential freedoms as well as the activities of human rights defenders and members of civil society. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders holds, in its article 5, that "everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, at the national and international levels: a) to meet or assemble peacefully; b) to form, join and participate in non-governmental organizations, associations or groups." Article 7 of the declaration affirms that "Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to develop and discuss new human rights ideas and principles and to advocate their acceptance." Indeed, the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders has specifically called attention to the "greater risks... faced by defenders of the rights of certain groups as their work challenges social structures, traditional practices and interpretations of religious precepts that may have been used over long periods of time to condone and justify violation of the human rights of members of such groups. Of special importance will be... human rights groups and those who are active on issues of sexuality, especially sexual orientation."
-Amnesty International USA
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Response to ECUSA
May 2, 2007
My dear Presiding Bishop:
My attention has been drawn to your letter of April 30th ostensibly written to me but published on the Episcopal News Service website.
In light of the concerns that you raise it might be helpful to be reminded of the actions and decisions that have led to our current predicament.
At the emergency meeting of the Primates in October 2003 it was made clear that the proposed actions of the Episcopal Church would “tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level, and may lead to further division on this and further issues …” Sadly, this proved to be true as many provinces did proceed to declare broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church. Since that time the Primates have established task forces, held numerous meetings and issued a variety of statements and communiqués but the brokenness remains, our Provinces are divided, and so the usual protocol and permissions are no longer applicable.
You will also recall from our meeting in Dar es Salaam that there was specific discussion about CANA and recognition – expressed in the Communiqué itself – of the important role that it plays in the context of the present division within your Province. CANA was established as a Convocation of the Church of Nigeria, and therefore a constituent part of the Communion, to provide a safe place for those who wish to remain faithful Anglicans but can no longer do so within The Episcopal Church as it is currently being led. The response for your own House of Bishops to the carefully written and unanimously approved Pastoral Scheme in the Communiqué makes it clear that such pastoral protection is even more necessary.
It is my heartfelt desire – and indeed the expressed hope of all the Primates of the Communion – that The Episcopal Church will reconsider its actions – and make such special measures no longer necessary. This is the only way forward for full restoration into fellowship with the rest of the Communion. Further, I renew the pledge that I made to your predecessor, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, that the Church of Nigeria will be the first to restore communion on the day that your Province abandons its current unbiblical agenda. Until then we have no other choice than to offer our assistance and oversight to our people and all those who will not compromise the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
You speak in your letter of centuries old custom regarding diocesan boundaries. You are, of course, aware that the particular historical situation to which you make reference was intended to protect the church from false teaching not to prevent those who hold to the traditional teaching of the church from receiving faithful episcopal care. It was also a time when the Church had yet to face into the challenge of different denominational expressions of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I also find it curious that you are appealing to the ancient customs of the church when it is your own Province’s deliberate rejection of the biblical and historic teaching of the Church that has prompted our current crisis.
You mention the call to reconciliation. As you well know this is a call that I wholeheartedly embrace and indeed was a major theme of our time in Tanzania. You will also remember that one of the key elements of our discussion and the resulting Communiqué was the importance of resolving our current differences without resorting to civil law suits. You agreed to this. Yet it is my understanding that you are still continuing your own punitive legal actions against a number of CANA clergy and congregations. I fail to see how this is consistent with your own claim to be working towards reconciliation.
Once again please know that I look forward to the day when this current crisis is behind us and we can all be reunited around our One Lord and only Saviour Jesus the Christ. Until then be assured of my prayers for you and The Episcopal Church.
In Christ,
Signed
The Most Revd. Peter J Akinola, CON, DD
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of all Nigeria
My dear Presiding Bishop:
My attention has been drawn to your letter of April 30th ostensibly written to me but published on the Episcopal News Service website.
In light of the concerns that you raise it might be helpful to be reminded of the actions and decisions that have led to our current predicament.
At the emergency meeting of the Primates in October 2003 it was made clear that the proposed actions of the Episcopal Church would “tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level, and may lead to further division on this and further issues …” Sadly, this proved to be true as many provinces did proceed to declare broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church. Since that time the Primates have established task forces, held numerous meetings and issued a variety of statements and communiqués but the brokenness remains, our Provinces are divided, and so the usual protocol and permissions are no longer applicable.
You will also recall from our meeting in Dar es Salaam that there was specific discussion about CANA and recognition – expressed in the Communiqué itself – of the important role that it plays in the context of the present division within your Province. CANA was established as a Convocation of the Church of Nigeria, and therefore a constituent part of the Communion, to provide a safe place for those who wish to remain faithful Anglicans but can no longer do so within The Episcopal Church as it is currently being led. The response for your own House of Bishops to the carefully written and unanimously approved Pastoral Scheme in the Communiqué makes it clear that such pastoral protection is even more necessary.
It is my heartfelt desire – and indeed the expressed hope of all the Primates of the Communion – that The Episcopal Church will reconsider its actions – and make such special measures no longer necessary. This is the only way forward for full restoration into fellowship with the rest of the Communion. Further, I renew the pledge that I made to your predecessor, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, that the Church of Nigeria will be the first to restore communion on the day that your Province abandons its current unbiblical agenda. Until then we have no other choice than to offer our assistance and oversight to our people and all those who will not compromise the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
You speak in your letter of centuries old custom regarding diocesan boundaries. You are, of course, aware that the particular historical situation to which you make reference was intended to protect the church from false teaching not to prevent those who hold to the traditional teaching of the church from receiving faithful episcopal care. It was also a time when the Church had yet to face into the challenge of different denominational expressions of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I also find it curious that you are appealing to the ancient customs of the church when it is your own Province’s deliberate rejection of the biblical and historic teaching of the Church that has prompted our current crisis.
You mention the call to reconciliation. As you well know this is a call that I wholeheartedly embrace and indeed was a major theme of our time in Tanzania. You will also remember that one of the key elements of our discussion and the resulting Communiqué was the importance of resolving our current differences without resorting to civil law suits. You agreed to this. Yet it is my understanding that you are still continuing your own punitive legal actions against a number of CANA clergy and congregations. I fail to see how this is consistent with your own claim to be working towards reconciliation.
Once again please know that I look forward to the day when this current crisis is behind us and we can all be reunited around our One Lord and only Saviour Jesus the Christ. Until then be assured of my prayers for you and The Episcopal Church.
In Christ,
Signed
The Most Revd. Peter J Akinola, CON, DD
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of all Nigeria
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